For My Mother, I Love You But I Do Not Like You.

Bones and All (2022) // dir. Luca Guadagnino

ETHEL CAIN SHOT BY SILKEN WEINBERG FOR VOGUE

(WEARING CUSTOM GIVENCHY)

For a minute, just for a minute, you made it feel like home. Maren and Lee in Bones and All (2022)

I am my mother's daughter when I clean because I'm depressed, and cry when over stimulated. I skip meals and tell everyone I "forgot". I feel my chest heavy with anxiety. I do not ask to be medicated. I am the strong one. The pillar. And I read a book that reminds me of her, but also of me. I hold no sympathy for her, only anger. I did not ask what made her react this why, only why that was her only reaction. I identify her trauma responses, but can't find the solution to my own. I understand her, but hate the traits she has given me. And intergenerational trauma is real, so if I was in my mother when she was in her mother, and my daughter was in my mother when I was in her, then what is a clean slait for any of us? when they say, we become more like our mothers the older we get, do we inherit their ability to bow, and bend, and break but never make a sound? But if I am my mother's trauma, do I scream uncontrollably because my life isn't in my palms? I swore to never be the woman that takes a man's fist, but my own fist is in my mouth as I look into the mirror and ache to shatter it. Am I my mother's trauma when I forgive a man for treating me like I am invaluable? Am I my mother's daughter when I half-jokingly prepare to give up on my dreams, just to be half-heartedly loved? And I pride myself in knowing that I can tell when someone is manipulating me, but then just as shamelessly ask to be manipulated; to be told that I am loved even if it is a lie. Where is the sense in being senseless in the name of love? Am I my mother's daughter when I overshare to a stranger because no one I love, loves me back enough to listen? And if I am a vessel of trauma, what will my daughter be? Am I my mother's trauma when I yearn to be with someone that does not even respect me? And if this is all my mother's, then am I my father's daughter when I look at my mother in detest over the destiny that she has handed over to me?

Autumn. Twilight. Fire lit. Restless. Solitary. She sits. She goes to window. She stands. She sits. Twilight. She thinks. She writes. She sighs. Twilight. Solitary.

James Joyce, from Solitary Hotel in “The Complete Works”

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering". So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

Milan Kundera

Still Walking (歩いても 歩いても), dir. Koreeda Hirokazu (2008)

“You havent kissed anyone for a while now.

To you, everything tastes like blood.”

-Warsan Shire, from “Souvenir”, Our Men Do Not Belong to Us

this is my multiverse of madness